Weighing in, and bacon.

I don’t know if you read this blog for the witty turns-of-phrase (yes, I flatter myself), for the insightful links from the research department, because you have nothing better to do, or because you keep thinking that sooner or later I’ll lose some more weight.

If that last reason is your reason, I have good news and bad news for you tonight: No, I haven’t lost weight since the last time I posted a weigh-in. I was 262 this morning, which isn’t bad considering how much I stretched my “program” since I was last posting regularly in March, but it’s not the same thing as losing weight. The good news is that now I’m pissed-off about it. Which isn’t a good motivator for everyone, but for me, it’s always been a fine way to keep my mind on the project at-hand. Being angry about something sharpens my focus.

Why am I pissed-off? Well, there are the obvious reasons – primarily that I’ve been stalled within a few pounds for too long, and since I actually write about his stuff on the internet it’s kind of embarrassing to be stalled for so long for no other reason than that I haven’t been on-task. I wanted to be farther along than this before summer, and I’m not, and it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

But that’s not all. The truth is – and we all know this – that there are a lot of too-good-to-be-true weight-loss gimmicks out there, and if people like me who are doing this sensibly don’t succeed, and don’t share that success, the gimmicks win. And then everybody loses, because the gimmicks don’t work. At least not in the long run.

So I won’t have it. No white-bread hamburger bun, no bowl of cheese-grits, no Kraft Mac and Cheese tastes good enough for me to let the gimmicks win without a fight.

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Speaking of hamburger buns, here’s a bonus bacon cheeseburger link and a couple of thoughts. You may have read that McDonald’s announced they will phase out using pigs from gestation-crates for their pork products. Good news, right? Yeah, turns out they’re not going to actually, ummm, do that for about ten years. One more reason to stay away from fast food.

Beyond that, let’s talk about bacon cheeseburgers for a minute. A while back, in one of my more lucid moments in this process, it occurred to me that when I order a bacon cheeseburger – or any sort of beef burger – what I taste is the burger. Furthermore, that’s what I want to taste when I order a burger – the beef. So I tried really thinking and tasting my burger (yeah, eating intentionally) to see how much the bacon was adding to the experience. Answer? Almost nothing. And on further review, I think I’m going to jettison the cheese. A good burger stands on its own. No reason to tart up a good piece of beef. It’s insulting to both the cow and the pig.

Yeah, I still eat bacon, you bet I do. But I save it for places where it really makes a difference – carbonara, next to an egg, places where it belongs. It doesn’t belong on a burger. So I don’t put it there anymore. And I don’t miss it.

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